Stores wide shut
When nobody responds to the dinner bell
SOME FRIENDS in southwest Arkansas were excited to hear that Texas’ governor was slinging the doors open to his state—and his state’s economy. Our friends were happy that they’d soon get to go to Texarkana again, and shop at T.J. Maxx.
Happy? More like Christmas-morning ecstatic.
But although a T.J. Maxx might be a magnet for certain piney-hills types sick of the lockdown, a governor’s orders apparently don’t translate into immediate cash register sales. Politicians in Austin are ringing the dinner bell, but not everybody’s answering it.
The other day Reuters reported that The Domain Mall in Austin is open. But few people are risking a visit.
Restaurants, malls and other stores in Texas were allowed to open at 25 percent capacity this week. Some rural counties allowed their stores to hold even more people, depending on the local area’s covid-19 numbers. But people are still staying away in droves.
Once again, Arkansas can learn from the actions of other states. Doubtless, our governor is.
Dispatches from exotic locations such as Abilene, San Angelo, South Padre Island, even Lubbock, note that people are again flowing to parks and beaches in Texas. But not so much to indoor locations that sell non-life-sustaining stuff. One report said a bar in Austin had put Plexiglas barriers between bar stools. We’re not sure how that works, but it doesn’t sound like a welcoming aesthetic.
One reason might be because a supposedly private conversation the governor of Texas had with lawmakers leaked this week. Gov. Greg Abbott’s conversation was recorded and given to the press. (A spokesman with his office confirmed it was real, according to The Daily Beast.)
In it, Gov. Abbott asked, “How do we know reopening businesses won’t result in faster spread of more cases of covid-19?”
He answered his own question: “Listen, the fact of the matter is pretty much every scientific and medical report shows that whenever you have a reopening—whether you want to call it a reopening of businesses or of just a reopening of society—in the aftermath of something like this, it actually will lead to an increase and spread. It’s almost ipso facto.”
He added: “The more that you have people out there, the greater the possibility is for transmission. The goal never has been to get transmission down to zero.”
His leaked comments may have put a damper on any celebrations or grand reopenings.
THIS IS also a reminder that neither governors nor presidents can reopen the country with a starting gun. Remember, Americans were already staying home, sheltering themselves and their loved ones, before official orders came down from state capitals. Restaurant business was down, travel was down, spending was down before the lockdown. According to a report in The New York Times this week: “Even in states that imposed stayat-home orders or closed nonessential businesses relatively early, households and businesses had begun to shift their behavior about 10 days before those orders. In states that closed later, that shift had come about 20 days earlier.”
And probably most Americans will come out of their lockdown with just as much caution.
There’s not a lot of good in this situation, but it seems as though Arkansas is reopening on a slower pace than Texas (or Georgia or Florida), which seems reasonable. And as we go, we can learn from the mistakes, and victories, of other states.
Arkansas has come under some criticism, but this state’s pragmatic steps have been just what the pandemic doctor ordered. First, get people used to wearing masks in grocery stores, then get them to social distance at the gym, then perhaps one day we’ll have football again. Slow. Steady. Wary. One foot in front of the other. As if we were walking through a backyard of good old-fashioned Texas bull nettle.
Some of us have stopped hoping for that “V” shaped bounce-back in the nation’s economy. But at this point, a “U” would be most welcome.